Departure at 6:50 am on July, Saturday 24th, 2010 from Geneva. We were 2. The TGV dropped Nanasse and I at the station of Lyon-Perrache. We arrived at Paris Gare de Lyon at 11 am. And now, go to the National museum of natural history. We began with the section of Comparative Anatomy and Paleontology.


My teammate tried to see the difference between his hand and the hand of a large cetacean... and that made some visitors laught. The paleontological section was impressive and we felt very small compared to these giant prehistorical animals. While some imagined dinosaurs as a vehicle, others were feeling much more smaller than they were in reality (without any link to my teammate and the cetacean episode).

When we went down to the anatomy section (the paleontological one is above), we finished our tour with a skeleton of a jumping squirrel.

This is the hall of the anatomy section.

Then we had a nice lunch seating on the benches of the Jardin des Plantes. The sparrows were enjoying it as much as we do. To digest, we opted for the zoo and began with Captain Haddock's friends :

Then we saw the bush dogs which are fast animals (I think they have dog and bear bloods mixed).

Of course we passed in front of the wildcats' box, but we found nothing else but 2 couples of leopards. One of them offered us a yawn full of fangs :

A nice flower in front of the reptilians' box :

We continued the visit of the museum with La Grande Galerie de l'évolution and the temporary exposure about...dinosaurs ! First the exposure, lot of skeletons everywhere. A Maiasaura baby, a Velociraptor and a Bambiraptor, a Tyrannosaurus-Rex and some others as the Tsintaosaurus (meaning ''Tsingtao Crested Lizard'' from China).

Then we went upstairs. We began to feel tired, so when we'll go out of there we'll do a break. We saw the Grande Parade de l'Evolution, which is enormous and very interesting :

And a lion from it (he looked like he was going to crunch us) :

Pfiuuu, it's 17:15 pm, we visited the museum for nearly 6 hours, it's right to say that we need one day to visit the entire museum. We sat on a bench, Nanasse rested while I walked in the Jardin des Plantes. 7 pm: the park was closing so we had to continued our walk throughout Paris, but where ? ''What if we go to the Eiffel Tower?'' Good idea, so let's go ! So we were going (still by foot...)prancing on the banks of the Seine. There are some ''islands'' where people are dancing at the sounds of accordions and guitars. At one time we saw Notre-Dame, so we made a detour to look at it.

While we were heading to the Eiffel Tower, the night began to fall and the Tower guided us with its light ray. We passed in front of the Assemblée Nationale.

Finally, near 11:30 pm, we arrived at the feets of the oldest and tallest lady of France.

We were provinding us a break because of the photo material, it's quite heavy ! After a long break, we went to the entrance. Only one person was before us! Usually there is more than 200 persons awaiting... We began to climb all the stairs and arrived at the first floor. The Tower was light up with thousands of flashes, like a giant Christmas Wreath. We enjoyed the time of the show while doing a little break at this floor.The lights went off. We continued our climbing for the infinite and far away...in reality only the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. At the top, the view was magic, especially by night. We made several turns of the floor and more than 20 photos, but passed midnight it's not so easy to take photos. With a long pause and axed towards the Trocadéro crossroad we took some nice photos :

Then we enjoyed a long break, our feet were as tired as us so it was hard to walk. It was 1:30 am and someone asked us to go down by the lift. It was a dream for our sore feet ! New break at the bottom of the Tower, I used it to take a...different photo.

After a 30 minutes break, we returned to the walk in direction of the Trocadéro and the Arc de Triomphe. The more we walked, the more difficult it was for us and we enjoyed all the benches or small walls we found to have a break. We arrived at the Arc de triomphe at 2:20 am. At that late hour we thought there'll be nobody... but it was false, there were a lot of cars and traffic jam ! Unbelievable, as if the Champs Elysées never sleep !

We continued more lame than something else. 3:40 am, the Obélisque, new break, a police car greeted us (they didn't sleep neither). 4:35, the Louvre, home straight ! A good break and a photo of the Louvre by night, it was magical despite our feet's pain.

It was 5:40 when we arrived at the station, holding us to any barrier to avoid crawling. Feet and legs were the martyrs of this report which ended at 7:08 am into the TGV to Geneva. We didn't see the travel because of lightning sleep. But that will not prevent us for saying ''Everything's ok''(Tout va bien) ! Will it ?

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